Message in a Bottle (film)
Encyclopedia
Message in a Bottle is a 1999 American
romantic
drama film
directed by Luis Mandoki
. Based on a novel with the same name by Nicholas Sparks
, the film stars Kevin Costner
, Robin Wright Penn, and Paul Newman
. Message in a Bottle was filmed in Maine
, Chicago
, and Wilmington, North Carolina
in the United States
.
, she finds a mysterious, intriguing love letter in a bottle in the sand, addressed from Garret to Catherine. She is fascinated by it and comes into possession of two more letters by the same person, eventually tracking down the man who wrote them, Garret Blake. He has refurbished a boat called Happenstence with his wife before her death and he lives quietly on the outer banks of North Carolina
with his father, Dodge.
Theresa and Garret become better acquainted, but she does not reveal her knowledge of the love letters. Along with the literal distance between them — they live hundreds of miles apart—there is another problem: Garret cannot quite forgive Catherine for dying and leaving him.
Theresa's career flourishes as the romantic tale of the "messages in a bottle" is told in print, without naming names. Garret makes a trip to Chicago to visit Theresa and her young son. Their new love grows, until one day Garret finds his letters in a drawer in Theresa's apartment. Garret angrily goes home by himself.
A year later, Dodge tracks down Theresa. He informs her that his son Garret has died at sea in a storm while attempting to rescue someone else. A bottle with a message inside was found on his boat. Theresa realizes that it was written a night before Garrett's last sailing. In it, he apologizes to Catherine and says that in Theresa he has found a new love, a love he must fight for.
, but some members of the town council objected to the drinking, cursing and sex in the movie and demanded script revisions in exchange for shooting permission. Warner Bros. then tried Martha's Vineyard
near Chilmark
, Massachusetts
, but the Chilmark Conservation Commission turned down a request to build a temporary 3000 square feet (278.7 m²) house on stilts
in the dunes near Chilmark Pond.
Although the Chicago Tribune
gave permission for its name and image to be used, the actual newspaper office where Theresa works, according to the film's official Web site, was built inside a Los Angeles warehouse.
gave the film a score of 31% based on 35 reviews. Costner's performance in the film earned him a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Actor (also for For Love of the Game
).
wrote the song "What Will I Do
" for the movie. Singer Richard Marx
also composed the song "One More Time
", sung by Laura Pausini
, that played during the credits.
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
romantic
Romance film
Romance films are love stories that focus on passion, emotion, and the affectionate involvement of the main characters and the journey that their love takes through courtship or marriage. Romance films make the love story or the search for love the main plot focus...
drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
directed by Luis Mandoki
Luis Mandoki
Luis Mandoki is a Mexican film director working in Mexico and Hollywood.Luis Mandoki studied Fine Arts in Mexico and at the San Francisco Art Institute, the London College of Printing, and the London International Film School...
. Based on a novel with the same name by Nicholas Sparks
Nicholas Sparks (author)
Nicholas Charles Sparks is an internationally-bestselling American novelist and screenwriter. He has 16 published novels, with thematic ideas that include cancer, death and love. Six have been adapted to film, including Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember, The Notebook, Nights in Rodanthe,...
, the film stars Kevin Costner
Kevin Costner
Kevin Michael Costner is an American actor, singer, musician, producer, director, and businessman. He has been nominated for three BAFTA Awards, won two Academy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. Costner's roles include Lt. John J...
, Robin Wright Penn, and Paul Newman
Paul Newman
Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver and auto racing enthusiast...
. Message in a Bottle was filmed in Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
, Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, and Wilmington, North Carolina
Wilmington, North Carolina
Wilmington is a port city in and is the county seat of New Hanover County, North Carolina, United States. The population is 106,476 according to the 2010 Census, making it the eighth most populous city in the state of North Carolina...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Plot
Theresa Osborne works for The Chicago Tribune as a researcher (she is a former reporter). On a trip to Cape CodCape Cod
Cape Cod, often referred to locally as simply the Cape, is a cape in the easternmost portion of the state of Massachusetts, in the Northeastern United States...
, she finds a mysterious, intriguing love letter in a bottle in the sand, addressed from Garret to Catherine. She is fascinated by it and comes into possession of two more letters by the same person, eventually tracking down the man who wrote them, Garret Blake. He has refurbished a boat called Happenstence with his wife before her death and he lives quietly on the outer banks of North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
with his father, Dodge.
Theresa and Garret become better acquainted, but she does not reveal her knowledge of the love letters. Along with the literal distance between them — they live hundreds of miles apart—there is another problem: Garret cannot quite forgive Catherine for dying and leaving him.
Theresa's career flourishes as the romantic tale of the "messages in a bottle" is told in print, without naming names. Garret makes a trip to Chicago to visit Theresa and her young son. Their new love grows, until one day Garret finds his letters in a drawer in Theresa's apartment. Garret angrily goes home by himself.
A year later, Dodge tracks down Theresa. He informs her that his son Garret has died at sea in a storm while attempting to rescue someone else. A bottle with a message inside was found on his boat. Theresa realizes that it was written a night before Garrett's last sailing. In it, he apologizes to Catherine and says that in Theresa he has found a new love, a love he must fight for.
Production
The producers originally planned to film on Tangier Island, VirginiaVirginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, but some members of the town council objected to the drinking, cursing and sex in the movie and demanded script revisions in exchange for shooting permission. Warner Bros. then tried Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard is an island located south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, known for being an affluent summer colony....
near Chilmark
Chilmark
Chilmark may be a reference to:*Chilmark, Massachusetts, United States, a town on the island of Martha's Vineyard*Chilmark, Wiltshire, a village in the English county of Wiltshire...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, but the Chilmark Conservation Commission turned down a request to build a temporary 3000 square feet (278.7 m²) house on stilts
Stilts
Stilts are poles, posts or pillars used to allow a person or structure to stand at a distance above the ground. Walking stilts are poles equipped with steps for the feet to stand on, or straps to attach them to the legs, for the purpose of walking while elevated above a normal height...
in the dunes near Chilmark Pond.
Although the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
gave permission for its name and image to be used, the actual newspaper office where Theresa works, according to the film's official Web site, was built inside a Los Angeles warehouse.
Cast
- Kevin CostnerKevin CostnerKevin Michael Costner is an American actor, singer, musician, producer, director, and businessman. He has been nominated for three BAFTA Awards, won two Academy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. Costner's roles include Lt. John J...
- Garret Blake - Robin Wright Penn - Theresa Osborne
- Paul NewmanPaul NewmanPaul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver and auto racing enthusiast...
- Dodge Blake - John SavageJohn Savage (actor)John Savage is an American film actor, producer, production manager, and composer.- Acting career :...
- Johnny Land - Illeana DouglasIlleana DouglasIlleana Douglas is an American actress, director, screenwriter, and producer.-Background:Douglas is a granddaughter of the actor Melvyn Douglas and his first wife, artist Rosalind Hightower, and has said that her grandfather's performance in Being There, in particular, was influential on her own...
- Lina Paul - Robbie ColtraneRobbie ColtraneRobbie Coltrane, OBE is a Scottish actor, comedian and author. He is known both for his role as Dr...
- Charlie Toschi - Jesse JamesJesse James (actor)Jesse James is an American actor.-Life and career:James was born in Palm Springs, California, the son of Jaime, a laboratory technician, and Shane James, an actor....
- Jason Osborne - Bethel LeslieBethel LeslieBethel Leslie was an American theatre, film, and television actress and a screenwriter.Born in New York City, Leslie was discovered by George Abbott, who cast her in the play Snafu in 1944...
- Marta Land - Tom AldredgeTom AldredgeThomas Ernest "Tom" Aldredge was an American television, film and stage actor.-Life and career:Aldredge was born in Dayton, Ohio, the son of Lucienne Juliet and W. J. Aldredge, a colonel in the United States Army Air Corps...
- Hank Land - Hayden PanettiereHayden PanettiereHayden Leslie Panettiere is an American actress and singer, best known as cheerleader Claire Bennet on the NBC television series Heroes. She began her acting career by playing Sarah Roberts on One Life to Live , and Lizzie Spaulding on Guiding Light , before starring at age 10 as Sheryl Yoast in...
- girl on a sinking boat - SY Irian, SY Arapaho - Concordia yawlsConcordia yawlsThe Concordia yawl was designed in 1938 by naval architect C. Raymond Hunt with input from Llewellyn and Waldo Howland, Clinton Crane, Fenwick Williams and Frank Paine....
Critical response
The film received mixed to negative reviews from critics. Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
gave the film a score of 31% based on 35 reviews. Costner's performance in the film earned him a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Actor (also for For Love of the Game
For Love of the Game (film)
For Love of the Game is a 1999 American drama sports film based on the novel of the same title by Michael Shaara...
).
Box office
Message in a Bottle opened at #1 the Valentine Day's weekend of 1999 with an estimated $16.7 million. It grossed $52.8 million domestically with an additional $66 million overseas to a total of $118.8 million worldwideMusic
Irish music group ClannadClannad
Clannad are an Irish musical group, from Gaoth Dobhair, County Donegal. Their music has been variously described as bordering on folk and folk rock, Irish, Celtic and New Age, often incorporating elements of an even broader spectrum of smooth jazz and Gregorian chant...
wrote the song "What Will I Do
The Best of: In a Lifetime
The Best of Clannad: In a Lifetime is a greatest hits compilation album by Clannad. It contains two new tracks, "Christmas Angels" and "What Will I Do", the latter of which is on the soundtrack to the Kevin Costner film Message in a Bottle.-Charts:...
" for the movie. Singer Richard Marx
Richard Marx
Richard Noel Marx is an American adult contemporary and pop/rock singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. He had a string of hit singles in the late 1980s and 1990s, including "Endless Summer Nights", "Right Here Waiting", "Now and Forever", and "Hazard"...
also composed the song "One More Time
One More Time (Laura Pausini song)
"One More Time" is song by Richard Marx which he co wrote with David Foster for Laura Pausini. Later Marx recorded the song for his sixth studio album, Days in Avalon. Pausini's version was originally released in 1999 for the movie Message in a Bottle...
", sung by Laura Pausini
Laura Pausini
Laura Pausini, is a Grammy Award-winning Italian soul singer-songwriter. She debuted in 1993, winning the newcomer artists' section of the 43rd Sanremo Music Festival with the song "La solitudine", which became an Italian standard and an international hit, reaching the top spot on the Italian...
, that played during the credits.